December 15, 2008

Battle Report - Warmachine

Hordes & Warmachine 2v2 1000ptsMenoth/Everblight vs. Khador/Skorne

With Christmas less than a fortnight away this was the last game for 2008 amd it was a good one. Hanks EverBlight and my Menoth against Toshis Khador and Stephens Skorne. We each took 500pts, principally as thats all Hank and Stephen can field at the moment. Original plan was for Toshi and I to pack out 750-1000 pts each, but this would have left the game far to unbalanced and besides my kitchen table isnt that big!?!

I had a couple of alternate lists worked out, including a light warjack dominate one with Amon Ad-Raza. However, in the end I decided to stick with Kreoss principally as I know how to play him and a complicated 2v2 isnt the time to bring in Amon whose is very difficult to master. After various modifications (based mainly on whatever supersized Khador models Toshi brought) my final list was:

Kreoos

Devout

Devout

Devout

Revenger

Wrack

Wrack

Wrack

Choir (6)

Deliverers (9)

Eiryss

Going with a horde of light jacks was a big risk particularly against Khadors Drago and Behemoth but I wanted to experiment. The principle aim was to get the Devouts into melee range with the enemy casters where their Choir infused, Kreoss boosted attacks and bonus Defensive strikes could do some serious damage. The Revenger was there solely to march Lamentation as far forward as possible mainly as I wanted to shut down Khadors magic unit enhancements. The Deliverers while weak gave me a useful area effect weapon and helped divert some of the enemy forces away, and Eiryss allowed me to plan an alternative assassination route and to take out enemy sniper units.

Deployment & Initial turnsAs my table is smaller than regulation size the deployment zones shrunk to 7" for normal and +9" for advanced deployment. Toshi had some new terrain pieces with him including some nice looking buildings. These went on one side forming a small village with two large forests going on the other leaving a relatively large clear space in the centre. Khador/Skorne deployed first with the village on their right, and forests on their left. Menoth/Everblight deployed second.

The board - Menoth/Everblight on left & Khador/Skorne on right

Khador/Skorne initial deployment - note Behemmoth & Drago on left

Initial Khador/Skorne movement

The first few turns were largely uneventful. Khador bombarded the Everblight line and the Deliverers who were stationed with them, Eiryss picked off the Widowmakers (RAT 9 is just awesome), and the Deliverers managed to kill *ahem* nothing. Menoth advanced toward the village looking to sweep round behind the main enemy battleline and go for the casters. The Choir had 'Safe Passage' and 'Ward' alternating with 'Lamentation' blasting out through the Revengers arcnode.

Menoth/Everblight advance

Kreoss & the Choir

In the centre things started to get interesting pretty quick. The movement of Everblights Archers & Eiryss on our right saw Khador divert resources that way to take care of them. This left the Skorne army open and the Everblight forces promptly charged in. However, a series of poor dice rolls cost us and we failed to inflict the damage we were expecting. Although the Deliverers did manage to kill a few Skorne troopers.

Middle Stages & the Grand MeleeBy this stage things were getting very confused with soul tokens, fury markers, focus points and spell tokens scattered everywhere. The Everblight and Skorne armies were heavily engaged in the centre of the board while the Menoth light jacks were finally beginning to flank around the village.

Skorne & Everblight moments before the initial melee charges.

Note the Behemmoth distracted on the left, and out of the initial fighting.

The grand melee goes poorly for our side as Skorne and Khador

begin to dominate

Khador's big jacks though were causing havoc and rampaging everywhere, although they initially concentrated on killing the Menoth Deliverers rather than the stronger Everblight forces. Again some unlucky dice rolls including a failed Slam attack by an Everblight beast saw the melee drag on and gave Khador's big jacks time to return to the fight.

Everblights caster (unpainted) all alone against the enemy

On the Menoth side the Revenger was destroyed but it had served its purpose in pushing the enemy casters back away from their forces, albiet temporarily, with Lamentation. The Devouts were now cutting their way through the Skorne flank and were getting set to hit their caster. However, at this point things began to go pear shaped for our side.

The Devouts attack the Skorne flanking units

The end of all thingsKreoss's feat was the key card in our hand this match and we used it reasonably well knocking down the majority of the enemy forces with ours all in position to charge home. However, once again the enemy casters notably Vlad were just out of reach (having pushed back to avoid Lamentation) and they were saved from Kreoss wrath.

A Devout attacking the Skorne caster, Vlad is just behind it and

destroyed it next round

The remaining Everblight units attempted to wipe out the knockdown Skorne units but failed as did the Devouts who launched their attacks at the two enemy casters who now advanced into contact. The Skorne caster saved not once, not twice but three times from Death by her ability to leech damage (or something like that), she ended the game with one damage box left.

Kreoss battling it out near the end

The final act saw the Everblight forces destroyed and Kreoss left all alone with the Choir (soon decimated by Khador bombards) and a single Devout. He managed to last two rounds of combat, but was eventually cut down surrounded on all sides. The end result a good but very close victory to Khador/Skorne with 2 caster kills and no losses.

Picture of the Day

Toshis Khador Behemmoth - just an awesome paint job

We break now for Christmas, probably no more games until the first week of January. Would like to make that first one an Epic 2000pt+ match against Khador.